Cartoon politics
Sir-- The cleverness of the neo-cons, whose main theoretician- conceptualiser is William Kristol, is to realise that Bush is basically a simpleton who needs quick-and-easy cartoons of the world that "dumb down" all problems and side-step all history -- in other words quickie propaganda where truth is the main enemy.Kristol is the "theoretical heavyweight" of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington, whose main names are Steve Forbes, Jeane J Kirkpatrick, Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, James Woolsey and Gary Bauer. Founded in the wake of 11 September, 2001, FDD gives Bush and the Rumsfeld and Cheney groupings, the following "summary" of the world:
The world is divided into democracies such as America and Israel and they are surrounded by an ocean of "Islamo-fascism" and failed states, such as Afghanistan, where this Islamo-fascism takes root. Pan-Arabists such as the Ba'ath are secular "buddies" of this Islamo-fascism. Just as World War II was "the Allies against the fascists and other bad guys", the post 9/11 world is a return to "the Allies against the Islamic/Arab" world with Israel as the supreme world- historical battlefield. The Arabs and Islamic countries are basically "like Hitler and Stalin against Churchill and Roosevelt". Everything hinges on Israel.
By using simple examples, Kristol and friends are able to give Bush a kind of neo-con "baby food"/"infant formula" whereby the world becomes clear and there's no "strain caused by historical reasoning". Bush senses this makes it both easy for him to avoid thinking and any wrangle with the Zionist pressure groups, which might get him into the same corner his father got into with Shamir/Arens/Olmert in 1990/91, on the $10 billion Israel loan guarantees. The Bush family explains the 1992 Clinton victory "from nowhere" as explainable by the internal lack of Republican cohesiveness caused by Bush Senior's wrangle with Israel and the Zionists before 1992.
In other words, William Kristol and organisations like the FDD give Bush an instant cartoon-crutch to hold him up and shield him from truth and its attendant complexity. Neo- conservatism is an "escape to simplicity" which Kristol and company have used to insinuate themselves into Washington power.
Readers should go to
http://www.defenddemocracy.org for the overview of FDD.
Richard Melson
Cambridge, MA
USA
Cogent argument
Sir-- 'The Israelisation of America' (Al-Ahram Weekly, 11-17 September) by Ahdaf Soueif deserves wider dissemination. Ms Soueif puts into cogent argument issues that have bothered me for some time. America's unwavering support of Israel, no matter what Israel does, does not make geo-political sense. It has caused America's security to be threatened, American lives to be lost and America's position in the world to be weakened. American policy with regard to Israel is driven in part by domestic politics, but more by religious zeal, and it has made for strange partnerships.The suggestion that Israel remain one state, with the inclusion of all of the Palestinian territories and the principle of one person, one vote, just might be a viable approach to the solution of the continuing conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The continuing round of killings by both Israelis and Palestinians leads to no solution of the problems, but only exacerbates them; and the previously much-vaunted "roadmap" appears to be going nowhere.
If more attention were given to the plight of the Palestinians in the news media of the world, and if the Palestinians would have the discipline to stop committing terrorist acts, I believe that the sympathies of many would shift to the Palestinians.
I would hope that in a generation or two the conflict would be over. One can hope.
Jacob de Raat
Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Telling it as it is
Sir-- Re: "The Israelisation of America" (Al- Ahram Weekly, 11-17 September). Funny! Despite thousands of so-called "thinkers" and hundreds of so-called "political scientists" and "advisors" in the so-called Arab World, only a literatrice has the courage to tell it as is.Salim al-Sari
New York,
USA
American brakes
Sir-- Regarding Ms Ahdaf Soueif's recent article on the American "identification" with Israel (Al-Ahram Weekly, 11-17 September), I respectfully submit that Ms Ahdaf Soueif suffers from the same myopia as nearly every other writer critical of United States efforts in the Middle East. If she had bothered to follow the "roadmap", she would see a two-state solution to the Palestinian/Israeli issue. United States officials have repeatedly reiterated their plan to implement two "real" states.How can she claim identification when most Israeli Likud leaders such as Sharon and Mofaz want a series of neighborhood demilitarised Bantustans like the old South Africa. Recently in Haaretz the former defense minister Moshe Arens even called for a solution with Jordan, and no Palestinian state. None.
Check your facts Ms Soueif. You have it backwards. The United States is actually acting as a brake on Israel.
Without the United States, Arafat would now be dead, the West Bank would be in flames, and Israel would crush the Palestinians and deport them to Jordan.
George Rozes
Florida
USA
Beacon of despair
Sir-- 'The Israelisation of America' (Al-Ahram Weekly, 11-17 September) is in-depth and well written. It's a shame that this message never makes it in the popular media.American democracy and media have been hijacked by a few, namely, the neo-cons and pro- Zionist cabal -- this is truly a dangerous and ugly feature of American democracy, equipped with the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The beacon of hope for the rest of the world? I wonder.
Furkan Khan
Alameda, CA
USA
Afraid of introspection
Sir-- Regarding 'The Israelisation of America' (Al-Ahram Weekly, 11-17 September), I do not understand why Ahdaf Soueif, an Egyptian, and other Arab journalists do not spend any time or energy reflecting on their own countries.Are they afraid of introspection? Are they afraid of looking at their own governments?
Diane Johnson
Albuquerque, NM
USA
Blame Arafat
Sir-- Regarding 'The Israelisation of America' (Al-Ahram Weekly, 11-17 September) I just want to say, you need to get your facts straight. Israel did not kill Rachel Corrie, and you know it. Most of what you say is not true by any stretch of one's imagination, and one day the Palestine people will realise that Israel is not their enemy and is not the one keeping them downtrodden. It's Arafat.The PLO has received billions of dollars from all the nations and Arafat is putting it in banks and using it to buy WMDs. If all the money sent to the people was used for them, they would all be living in nice homes and they all could live in peace.
The route they are taking is getting them nothing but death. Many Palestinians know the truth: Israel will never cease to exist, not now or ever. Also, they need to know the American people do love them and want to see them happy, and not to breed hate in the land.
When Arafat goes, and his parties with him, and the money sent goes to the people, then and only then will they all see the truth. All the US hates is the hate and the war and the suffering on both sides.
Kim Segar
Mill Creek, WA
USA
Ignoble nobles
Sir-- I want to express through your esteemed newspaper my scepticism about the concepts of good and evil invoked and defined by the people who hold sway over the world. They construct, deconstruct, reconstruct and destroy the concepts of good and evil not according to an objective yardstick, but through the jaundiced eyes of power in order to justify immoral actions.Recently, the world watched with horror the display of the mutilated bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein. There is no doubt about the brutalities committed by Saddam Hussein and his male offspring; what is doubtful is the moral argument that is put forward to justify such acts. If the idea that Saddam's sons are evil incarnate justifies murder and presenting a murderer in monstrous terms, then we have to universalise this idea because our world is replete with ignoble nobles, not to mention murderers.
Unfortunately, some of them have been transformed into nobles and others were declared monsters after they fell out of the favour of power. The only criterion for declaring such people criminals is the whims and vagaries of those who wield power all over the world. These very whims of the powerful are now introduced as law for the comity of nations. One ponders over the murder of millions of Vietnamese by Kissinger, Churchill's use of poisonous gas against Kurd and Arab tribes, Jimmy Carter re-arming Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, the massacre of the refugees of Sabra and Shatilla under the command of Sharon, and not to forget the pioneers of modern America and Australia who laid the very foundation of these countries by exterminating Native Americans and the Aborigines of Australia.
Instead of bringing all these criminals to justice, we see such ignoble figures conferred with the most coveted awards such as Nobel Peace Prize, and represented as eminent figures embodying the ideals of enlightenment. What brings Sharon, Saddam, Kissinger and Stalin together are their crimes against humanity.
All this is not meant to start a chain of vendettas among nations; what I want to say is not to forget the people who committed crimes against humanity, and who, as a result of the power structure of the world, succeeded to represent themselves as emancipators of humanity. It is a double standard and irony that napalm terrorist Henry Kissinger is awarded with Nobel Prize and invited to deliver a lecture on eco- tourism; Sharon was declared a man of peace by Bush; Yasser Arafat (recipient of Nobel Peace Prize) was declared a terrorist; and Jimmy Carter was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Tariq Ali aptly described the last recipient as 'Ignoble Noble'. His observation holds good for those 'nobles' who became doves of peace owing to an erroneous idea of morality dictated by power. No doubt morality follows through the barrel of power.
Aziz Ali Dad
Gilgit
Pakistan
To the letter
Sir-- Regarding 'Containing divisions' (Al- Ahram Weekly, 11-17 September). This writing utterly misleads and completely misrepresents facts about the roadmap. First, the roadmap never requires the release of Palestinian prisoners by Israel. Not a single word in the roadmap mentions this. And yet, Israel released some anyway. There were reports that some of the released prisoners immediately involved themselves in terrorist acts.Second, the roadmap requires the Palestinians to dismantle the terrorist groups. It specifically spells that out clearly and unconditionally. The article, on the other hand, attempts to blame this as a ploy by Sharon. The Palestinians have accepted the roadmap in its entirety without any conditions when the roadmap was first published. If they cannot carry out this term required by the roadmap, then they clearly do not intend to fulfil what is demanded of their role. Third, the so-called hudna (truce) was never a cease- fire. Suicide bombers and daily shooting by Palestinians continued throughout the so-called hudna. As a matter of fact, the day that the hudna was announced a Palestinian terrorist murdered a Hungarian or Bulgarian worker in Israel.
Paul Sisco
Boston, MA
USA
Horrific decision
Sir-- What a bunch of jerks we are -- supporting the Sharon government. Their decision "to remove" Arafat is another grand scheme to shift the burden of responsibility away from themselves and onto someone else.Granted, Chairman Arafat isn't without many faults -- but neither is PM Sharon. Like many in the US and around the world, I condemn this horrific decision. I see now that they are the real "obstacles" to peace. They don't represent the Israel I have spent my whole life supporting.
I am ashamed that our country has supported this awful hardline government; some "light" they are unto the nations.
They have let everyone down. What a shame, what a crying shame.
Doris Cadigan
Massachusetts
USA
Day of shame
Sir-- Regarding 'Back to the fold' (Al-Ahram Weekly, 11-17 September). It is a day of shame for the Arab League. It has gone through phony rituals of discussions and mock delays, but finally allowed the US-appointed Iraqi foreign minister to take Iraq's seat at the Arab League meeting. It amounts to a collective acceptance and acquiescence of the US invasion of Iraq and the rape of a fellow Arab and Muslim country by an aggressor superpower, on the instigation of a Jewish American cabal of neo-cons -- and fully egged on by successive Israeli prime ministers -- with a long drawn list of further so-called axis Muslim countries in the Middle East, for US colonisation. The tame show of abject surrender to US dictates puts one billion Muslims at shame.The leaders at the helm of affairs of the Arab League countries are so divided among themselves, and so dependent on US largesse to prop them up, that any decision other than surrender of all their sovereignty and freedom to the rapacious US and Israeli aggressor should hardly come as a surprise to the rest of the world. It is their utter show of spineless subservience that spawns and nourishes 'Islamic terrorism' in the first place.
However, this should give some food for thought to the US operators. However much support they may get from the nominal rulers of Arab countries, they will have to contend with the real movers and shakers of Arab and Muslim destiny, who will always remain out of their traps and trappings.
Ghulam Muhammed
Mumbai
India
Who benefits
Sir-- 'They made him fail' (Al-Ahram Weekly, 11-17 September) is simply a silly analysis; one that's beneath that which should be expected of a professor.It is obvious to an objective five-year-old that Arafat had a dagger pointed at the PM's heart and was ready, willing and able to use it. The last thing the US wanted was for this to fail (and there was no benefit to Israel either). Under cui bono, only Arafat emerges as the obvious answer.
Carl Palm
Carmel
USA
The reasons
Sir-- If the US and Israel are serious about their call for the dismantling of the infrastructure which supports terror operations in Palestine, they will end the 36-year-old brutal occupation of Palestine by Israel. Today, the entire population of approximately 2.5 million Palestinians is entrapped, caged in by the Apartheid Wall, the electrified razor wire fence, roadblocks and checkpoints which make the country nearly impassable. Meanwhile, superhighways that cut through the heart of Palestine are for Israelis only, while Palestinians are forced to use roads that have been made nearly impassable.Over 4,000 farmers are prevented from tending their land and are shot on sight if they try. Shops as well as apartment buildings are bulldozed, frequently with people still inside, the citizenry are under constant surveillance and terrorised by the Israeli Defence Forces. Water is severely rationed to Palestinians, while illegal Israeli settlers water their lawns and fill their swimming pools.
According to the UN, the average Palestinian has one meal a day and lives on $2 a day. In Nablus, an Apartheid walled-in city of 200,000 which now survives on $1 per day or less, is continuously suffering under deadly military incursions and open fire attacks on its residents, ambulances and school children, according to eye witnesses.
These and a litany of other crimes against humanity should be examined as possible incitements that spawn the deadly rash of suicide bombers. The people who carry out these acts of violence have been provoked beyond despair. As they kill themselves they take innocent lives with them into the living hell Israel has created -- a hell which is paid for by the billions each year with US tax dollars.
Genevieve Cora Fraser
Orange, MA
USA
Two timelines
Sir-- Re: Azmi Bishara's "A lifetime credo" (Al- Ahram Weekly, 4-10 September). I am someone who pays some but not an excessive amount of attention to the Middle East, but who has many politically active Muslim and Jewish friends. Therefore, I have heard both sides of countless arguments concerning the rightful ownership of the Israel/Palestine.My Muslim friends point out that when Jewish refugees from the Holocaust flooded into Palestine during World War II, they were trespassing on land that was occupied by Palestinians. Therefore, they claim, what has occurred since 1948 is -- very simply -- an unlawful occupation. Furthermore, they claim that the Palestinians who were kicked out in the years that followed have an unconditional right to return. It was their land to begin with, my Muslim friends maintain, so they should be able to reclaim it.
My Jewish friends point out, to the contrary, that Jews occupied Israel sine 1000 B.C., and were kicked out, in order, by Philistines, Greeks, Romans, Christians, by Muslim Arabs (under caliph Umar in 640 AD) and then by Ottoman Turks. As a result, they were forced from their homeland to Europe and elsewhere, usually to lands where they were forced out yet again (Spanish Inquisition, Russian pogroms, etc.). For this reason, my Jewish friends assert, when they finally returned to Israel in mass numbers in the late 1800s and after World War II, they were not occupying a land that wasn't theirs, but instead attempting to end the long-lasting occupation of their own land.
I realise there are many other considerations that now cloud the "occupation" issue, but as an impartial observer, it seems clear to me that both Muslims and Jews have a claim to the land, and that depending on when you "start the timeline," you arrive at diametrically opposing views on who has a right to the land.
My Jewish friends, because they're
Jewish, start the timeline in 1000 B.C., while my Muslim friends start the timeline in the mid 1940s. Therefore, both sides claim rightfully that they have been treated violently, and violently removed, from their homeland.
When does the timeline start? Will there never be a peaceful resolution?
James Bester
London
England
Separate worlds
Sir-- In the past days the government held a meeting to discuss the reasons behind the hikes in prices of necessary commodities. After the meeting, the governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) declared: "We have taken preventive measures to control the exchange market," and the prime minister announced: "Everything is OK." So, we waited for any positive results, yet the prices of all goods continue to rise daily.It seems that the government is still living in a separate, rosy world while the citizens are living in another world. I was further shocked when some officials said that the government is not responsible for the devaluation of the Egyptian pound and the increase in prices.
I wonder how much longer will the government continue to fool us; we are bored of this game.
Ahmad Abdel-Tawwab
Cairo
Egypt
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 18 - 24 September 2003 (Issue No. 656)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/656/letters.htm